"Morning Gift I" is a jewellery shrine: a necklace, bracelet and ring made of soap shavings on a string placed in a shrine that has "Real Gold – Real Happiness" emblazoned inside the lid. "Morning Gift II" is a rubber glove pierced through with heart-shaped holes. The lace-like glove is placed in a box decorated with the punched-out hearts.
"Morning Gift I and II" can be interpreted as an invitation to romanticise everyday life in accordance with the recommendations in many women’s magazines and self-help books. However, "Morning Gift I and II" may also be seen as encouraging the opposite: a rejection of the image of everyday life as the negative counterpart to romantic love.
By inscribing these everyday objects into a romantic universe, this piece transforms them into aesthetic objects. The romantic context imbues them with value, and thus, "Morning Gift I and II" serve to illustrate the power of romantic imagery. At the same time, the objects suggest that romance is simply a setting or a context – the soap shavings and the rubber glove hold the qualities that are highlighted by the context.
“True Love" reflects the desire to create a more diverse and realistic jewellery image of love than the standard gold band that is so prevalent. The standard wedding band might give the impression that love is unambiguous, and that all love affairs are alike.
"True Love" is a set of rings: "Metamorphosis – 3.2 Grams of True Love" for him and "Metamorphosis – 2.8 Grams of True Love" for her. The object suggests that love consists of many contrasting emotions. The two sets of rings can be combined in many different ways, thus illustrating that the partners in a relationship might have very different feelings about each other and about the relationship at various times.
The rings for each of the two sets were created by manipulating a traditional wedding band of semi-round gold wire that was melted into a lump, rolled, drawn into a wire, pounded flat, filed to dust, etc. The process exploits the symbolic value of a series of classic jewellery techniques. For example, rolling the metal puts it under pressure and produces tensions that cause it to crack, unless it is heated – just like love. The way the rings are worn can also be seen as charged with symbolic meaning.
Until the Romantic era, marriage was a practical arrangement based on legal contracts, not on romance. The advent of romantic love placed the emphasis on emotions and the idea of life-long happiness with the one and only. At the same time, the practical aspects of living together, which marriage used to be synonymous with – and which in some cases eventually led to love – were reduced to Love’s negative opposite.
Today, weddings are often huge romantic productions, and at first glance "Feminine?" and "A Lawful Man" might resemble the "uniforms" that many wear when they get married: the full-length, white, puffy silk gown for her, and coat and tails for him. The floral embroidery on the bride’s dress depicts the feminine symbol, the emblem of Women’s Lib, and the tails on the man’s coat are extended to resemble the train that is traditionally reserved for the woman’s gown. With these small manipulations, “Feminine?” and “A Lawful Man” suggest that the roles we assign to each other in this romantic set-up are oddly mismatched to modern people’s actual married life and widespread contemporary perceptions of gender roles.
